On a burning summer afternoon, naked female bodies stretch out on the meadow beside Kenwood Ladies’ Pond, clustered and as content as Cézanne’s famous painting: intimately close; beatifically peaceful; proudly nude. Under weeping willow trees women splash in the cool water, chatting on floats, swimming in groups around the milky green lake, floating past ducks and moorhens nesting on the banks.
For a hundred years, women have swum here. Distinct from, and smaller, than Hampstead Heath’s Men’s Pond and Mixed Pond, the Ladies’ Pond is shielded by a canopy of trees — oaks, birches and sycamores keep this space blissfully free of the male gaze. Hiding a happy hidden medley of nipples, breasts and bums.
